Guillermo del Toro, director of Hellboy and Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth, will direct two Lord of the Rings prequels slated for release in 2010 and 2011, the BBC reports.
The first will be an adaptation of The Hobbit, the second an "original story" bridging the 60-year gap between Tolkien's first Middle Earth outing and the …

COMMENTS

Brilliant choice!

I'm not going to say anything about the three Blade films (except that that's why Snipes got 3 years) but Hellboy wasn't too bad and Pan's Labyrinth is possibly the best film I've seen since the end of the Rings.

OMG

The sad part that he will only contribute to LOTR notoriety, not legacy. The sequel is set to be about 60 years between events of The Hobbit and LOTR. Tolkien didn't write anything about that period, so judging from the films where we had magical teleportation going on in The Two Towers (elf army) and The Return of The King (Elrond) I will not be surprised to see Jar Jar Binks and ewoks. Plague upon your house Mr. Jackson.

Actually..

I seem to recall the director behind the LOTR trilogy was originally booted from the Hobbit movie against the folks that own the copyright's wishes.

Problem is, the film company still have the film rights for another year or two. I'd expect to see two Hobbit movies surface in the end. Given how good Hellboy was (yes, it had bad parts but as a whole package it worked well in it's genre); how good Pan's Labyrinth worked, I'm not too upset with the choice.

They have no respect for the author.

" the second an "original story" bridging the 60-year gap between Tolkien's first Middle Earth outing and the Lord of the Rings trilogy."

NOOOOO!

It is likely to be a ghastly exploitation of the Middle Earth world, with screenwriters trying to imitate Tolkien without his mastery of language and myths. Painful like all added bits of non-Tolkien dialogue in the LOTR films were.

Muppets on Hobbits

Yup. I loved the Smurfs. Remember the little critters? So cute. Just like El Reg. Why stop at reporting the news from Bag End (the Shire), when you could give us equally crucial updates about Muppets. And if you Muppets run out of news of Smurfs and Hobbits, then you can always report on critical showbiz stars the Simpsons.

Del Toro?

@Alastair Dodd

I apologise about the Blade reference (I did think it funny that Snipes got a year in jail for each film tho' </irony>).

You're right about Chronos - I'd forgotten that film. I've not seen The Devils Backbone - so I must hit the torrents later and admittedly I only saw it for the first time 3 days ago, but Pan's Labyrinth is one of the greatest, saddest, most poignant and beautiful films I have ever seen: on the strength of PL I do believe the right director has been found for The Hobbit.

@macrorodent

@Vaidotas Zemlys

What magical teleportation? Did I blink and miss something?

As for the sequel, it's got fairly fertile ground to cover between Hobbit and LotR. The beginning of Saruman's corruption, Denethor and Theoden at the peaks of their powers as leaders, Faramir and Boromir also finding their feet as leaders, exactly why Denethor thinks Faramir is a failure, Aragorn falling in love with Arwen and rejecting his birthright, etc..

Some of this was already sketched in by JRRT, so it's not like they're completely starting from scratch. And JRRT couldn't write dialogue or characters anyway, so there's no reason a decent scriptwriter (see Pan's Labyrinth) shouldn't do a pretty good job of it.

Re: Thorin sits down and sings about gold etc

"Brian Blessed as Thorin, that's my big idea."

Dunno about that, but he'd be a shoo-in for the part of Beorn. Better still forget about Ian McKellen and have him play Gandalf. Even with my misgivings about the movie I'd part with my hard earned to see *that* :-)

Trouble is, every time I think of Brian Blessed I think of him playing King Richard in the first Blackadder series. Gawd, the man is a hero

@LOTR notoriety

Round Green Door-tastic choice.

Hellboy is an ace film, and Pan's Labyrinth is wonderful. If he can bring some of that to The Hobbit, all well and good. Not sure about a sequel idea, but if anyone can pull it off, it's Jackson and Del Toro.

>SAY TO BARD "SHOOT DRAGON"

I never got any futher than that, as Bard invariably couldn't be arsed shooting Smaug and Bilbo got fried.

@smallbrainfield

@Chris Simmons

"you mean like Christopher continuing his fathers' work?"

Of course I don't mean him. He is not trying to write sequels to his father's books, he justs edits the posthumous papers with minimal added glue (and explains his decisions - there is a lot of that in the afterword of "Hurin's Children"). I am under the impression he is negative about the film projects, and no wonder.

Anyway, if someone were qualified to write a Hobbit sequel, it would be Christopher Tolkien.

@Macro

@ Graham Bartlett

There was no shining portals, but only magical teleportation explains presence of the elf army in Two Towers and Elrond in The Return of the King. Think, the army and Elrond could only come the way the Fellowship came, and the size of the Fellowship was chosen to improve the speed. So either elves followed the Fellowship, or they used teleportation. Neither of the elves were present in the books. Only small company of Rangers with Elrond sons came, but this was after the battle in Two Towers. These were two the most obvious idiotic discrepancies, I will not mention others. Mine's the coat with Elven runes spelling out Tolkien fanboy in Quenya:)

Re: Inspired choices

Tolkien: bard or butcher?

I'm sure I don't need to remind the folks here that Tolkien was a linguistics professor, and as such his greatest accomplishment with The Hobbit and the LotR trilogy was the development of the elvish and dwarvish languages, not the story - which was a butchering attempt at authoring a rich story.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of Middle Earth, but as an author Tolkien sucked; for me, it was his attention to detail in the out-of-story notes (ie. family trees, back stories, language development, and similar) that was his greatest achievement. I don't think many would argue that his good friend and author-competitor, CS Lewis, was leagues ahead in his story telling capabilities.

The fanboys need to settle down. Guillermo is a wonderful choice to helm the next two Middle Earth movies - his artistic direction is nothing short of stellar.

And, speaking of CS Lewis, Prince Caspian looks like it should also be an amazing movie.

@ Vaidotas Zemlys

Regarding how quickly the elves and Elrond got to Gondor: the company took a circuitous route, particularly when cutting through Moria (and being subsequently waylaid there). My Middle Earth geograhy is a bit rusty, but IIRC the is a road north up past the gap of Rohan west of the mountains all the way almost to the Shire - did Thingy The Brown use it when he met the company with a message from Saruman in FoTR? With hard riding perhaps the elves could make it in a matter of a fortnight...?

Anyway, my main objection to Peter Jackson's L0TR movies (apart from gratuitous CGI overload) is the dumbing down of the books to appeal to the lucrative pre-teen market, and the millions of dollars worth of merchandising opportunities. Given the fact that The Hobbit already *is* a childrens story, here's hoping there's not too much scope for that sort of thing to happen here!

Why the invented material

@@Macrodent Re: Christopher Walken

The way Isildur looked at it, this ring was your birthright. He'd be damned if any orcs gonna put their greasy green hands on his boy's birthright, so he hid it, in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this ring up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the ring. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the ring to you.

Should be better than a NZ shlock horror director

Having seen all of Del Toro's work to date I'm hopeful he'll make a better job of it then Peter Jackson did on LOTR. If you spend years claiming you're going to be faithful to the books you should at least BE faithful to the books and not cut bits, change bits, insert new bits, etc like he did.

I wonder who he'll cast Ron Perlman as? Del Toro uses him in almost every film he makes. Beorn perhaps?

Whether or not Tolkein sucks as a writer,

Hackson

Peter Jackson already destroyed one of Tolkien's books, does he need to put his grubby little mitts on this one, too? Looking at the rampant liberties he took with the story in LOTR, this stands to be yet another disgraceful, dumbed-down adaptation. I can't wait for more dwarvish hilarity like drinking contests and inexplicable Scottish accents.